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A twofer: Watch this program on Sunday to see BIDMC SPIRIT in action. But first, read the comments from the same training session (below) to get a preview!

(From our media relations office) BIDMC’s SPIRIT program will be featured on “Sunday with Liz Walker” this Sunday, June 22nd at 11 a.m. on WBZ-TV, Channel 4. Walker observed a SPIRIT training session in BIDMC’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit this week. The SPIRIT trainees shadowed Cathy Young, RN, and Nina Koyama, RRT, to identify work-arounds, time-wasters and barriers to patient care with the goal of implementing solutions as close to real time as possible. The trainees, who included, Susan Young, NICU, Denise Arena and Steve Maynard, Pharmacy, Elaine Mahon and Emi Rizik, Food Services, Heidi Jay, Healthcare Quality and Manny Alves, Pathology, then gathered with trainer Diana Richardson, Director of Support Business Services, to call-out a problem surrounding the turnaround time to clean equipment. BIDMC President and CEO Paul Levy was also interviewed separately about the purpose and goals of SPIRIT.

(And, now, some of the participant feedback comments from that same June 18 SPIRIT Orientation.)

I have been involved before this training, as a supervisor getting a SPIRIT call, vaguely knowing what it was about but then getting the call and really feeling on the hot seat. Not anything that was said, just the fact of suddenly doing a big problem solving while in a crisis. It happened twice in a week. So I was thinking this SPIRIT thing is a problem. I wasn’t looking forward to today. I feel like I was turned around a little by today. I can see the benefits. It helps you look at things differently. I was pleased to see that. But as the person getting the call, knowing you may be in a crisis, it can put a kink in your day!

I liked the day because it’s structured how you have to approach problems. It gave a process to do so, and then expanded on the process to show you how to get to root. The patient safety reports we have we are expected to get to root as well but I don’t think we ever got a tool to do it. This gave me the tools, and also the insight to see that I might not have been getting there in my patient safety reports.

I was trained more in systems. It was great to see how this goes hand in hand with systems work. They are not mutually exclusive.

The facilitators were great in emphasizing safety with us and all the folks out there. They were very professional about it and I just wanted to say thanks.

People do get defensive. That will change over time. The best part about this is it takes the finger pointing out of it.

I enjoy the log. It’s like my Boston Globe in the morning! I want to see the latest activity. I also use it to find out about problems others have had that can help me. For example, one of my staff came to me and said, "our old copier is broken again and we just have to throw it out the window and get a new one." It was constant. But I looked on the log and saw that a tech had helped fix another copier by showing how a certain piece jams. When I read that, I got in touch and asked if we could freeze the drawer we print on since we only use one size paper and that would take that piece that jams totally out of the picture. He said yes, we did it and guess what? The copier works perfectly. No more problems.

I work in research off site. To see the clinical side, the compassion, the excellence is very exciting. I feel more connected to the mission after my experience. I got a lot out of the day beyond SPIRIT itself. It was something much deeper for me.

I like the role playing. It really prepared us. My first experience with SPIRIT was coming into my area and seeing 20 SPIRIT folks training and thinking “Oh my G-d what is this?” It was interesting seeing pharmacy have to do lots with paper when I would have thought it would have been more automatic.

I thought we had a solution in place, but I learned we have lots of systems but they don’t talk to each other or no one gets the information in so that we must rely on the person and word of mouth to get the allergy and put it in the record … and a similar issue with a medication timing issue.

In our group we were all afraid to ask a doctor to explain something to us but then A. was bold and helped us ask one and it worked out very, very well.